Once there were green fields kissed by the sun; Once there were valleys where rivers used to run; Once there was blue sky with white clouds high above; Once they were part of an everlasting love. We were the lovers who strolled through green fields. Green fields are gone now, parched by the sun; Gone […]
Category Archives: redevelopment
“We should design man-made objects and products in such a way that we’re not destroying the resources, but that we’re basically borrowing them for a certain amount of time … And that we can take them out in their pure form and put them back into the system.” ~ Professor Dirk Hebel, Karlsruhe Institute of […]
Little boxes on the hillsideLittle boxes made of ticky-tackyLittle boxes, Little boxesLittle boxes all the sameThere’s a green one and a pink oneAnd a blue one and a yellow oneAnd they’re all made out of ticky-tackyAnd they all look just the same ~ Pete Seeger, Little Boxes Suburbs get a bad rap environmentally — spreading […]
“ I’m a country mouse, easily overwhelmed by humanity on the scale of cities, even those much smaller than this one (Kinshasa) … It struck me that the culture gap between city and country mouse might be wider than any other I’ve known.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver I grew up in the suburbs of a […]
I live on the edge of a metropolitan area. To the east are a couple of undeveloped mesas, some agricultural lands, and suburbs stretching the twenty miles or so into urban Denver. West, the mountains rise abruptly over two thousand feet in a couple of stages. The mountain face (Front Range) is mostly open, but […]
This is how it typically goes with solar arrays: We build them on open space rather than in developed areas. That is, they overwhelmingly occupy croplands, arid lands, and grasslands, not rooftops or parking lots. ~ Richard Conniff I live in the shadow of Lookout Mountain, part of Colorado’s Front Range, and from the top […]
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and […]
“He was as happy as a 12-year-old, trying to see what Mother Nature does there and then work it into a design … Science has kind of divorced itself from spirituality and emotion, but Darrel cultivates that experiential side of what landscapes evoke in us.” ~ Ulrich Lorimer about landscape architect Darrel Morrison Nature […]
“Cities are the 21st century’s dominant form of civilization — and they’re where humanity’s struggle for survival will take place … Half the planet’s population lives in cities. They are the world’s engines, generating four-fifths of the global GDP … As the economist Ed Glaeser puts it, ‘we are an urban species.’” ~ Robert Muggah and […]
My small town on the outer edge of the Denver metro area is beginning to experience a push for more housing — particularly for affordable housing. This is driving developers to construct dense multi-family apartments and condos on vacant lots and on clusters of what would have been single-family home lots. There is much concern […]
Writes of Nature 